No Fantasies Here
by Quin Firefrorefiddle
Summary: I've never seen this pairing done before, and I've never seen a pairing done this way. New and improved version! Review please!


No Fantasies Here  
Author: Quin Firefrorefiddle  
Rating: PG  
  
Author's Note/Disclaimer: New and improved! Yeah, so I like to break rules. This is all based on one vaguely remembered glance in the mess hall scene with Mouse that may not actually exist and a moment of inspiration. Deal with it. I own none of these people, or the setting, just the plot, the rest belongs to the Wonderful Brothers we all envy! This is an AU, Switch did not die in the movie, and she did not bend down and clutch Apoc's back or say the line. It's a weird pairing. Have fun and review!  
  
* * *  
  
She lived. Her, Trin, and Neo. The rest are gone, but she lived. I will be grateful for that, guiltily perhaps, since I could not save the others, but forever grateful that I did not have to mourn for her. If she had not, well, no point in pondering what-ifs, that was for Coppertops. I won't do that. But she had lived because I got up fast enough, I was still strong enough to shoot Cypher and get to the computer banks and unplug them. Never mind I collapsed the moment the Sentinels died. She lived, the rest isn't important.  
  
She is cold to everyone else. She respects everyone according to their job and how good they are at it, but to everyone else but me she gives nothing of herself. She is self contained as no one else I have ever met, except with me. With me she is awake, alive, vibrant and free, truly free, not of the Matrix, but of who she has become in order to not become someone else. She can do what she wants, instead of what she thinks she has to.  
  
My job here may be important, I may help the cause, but the real reason why I've stayed, why I watched my brother die and didn't go back to Zion, was, is, always will be for her. She needs me, at least for now. At least for today, probably for tomorrow, and though it's never sure I can't leave her. Call it a sense of duty, call it loyalty to a crew mate, whatever you want, but I know, twisted as it might be, unrequited as it always will be, it is love. She needs me. She never admits it, never will, but she needs me.  
  
Everyone needs a release valve. For most soldiers, it's the rush of the Matrix. Some people, a bit more passionate, it's a sex partner onboard. But most people let more out than she does. So she needs me.  
  
Why me? I'm the easiest to warm up to onboard, I guess. Probably it's because as the Operator, I spend the most time with the kids straight out of the Matrix. I was one of the first people she talked to at any length when she got here, before she closed up when she lost the shock. I can keep a secret. I listen to lots of stories but don't tell too many. And of course I'm terminally single.  
  
I still think of myself as single, sort of, even though I'm wedded to her as I don't think I ever could be to anyone else. Because I know it's one sided. I'm just around so she can borrow my warm body and open ears, or that's how she sees it. That's how it is. But she is the most unbelievable person I have ever met, so fragile looking, so cold, so acidic, so strong. She is everything I am not. She is everything I never can be. She is perfect for me, though she isn't for me, she's for herself, but I can pretend.  
  
I know what my position on this ship is. I have a knack with the computers and no plugs, so it's natural that since I can't fix anything for the life of me, like Dozer, I would be the Operator. I am a common choice in first new friend, and first choice for confidant. But I have no illusions. But I don't command the respect that others do, without even realizing it.  
  
Not like she does.  
  
So I'm a friendly guy with quick fingers that people can talk to. But I am seen as something of a child. I know, I can feel it. Even by her, though I prove regularly that I'm a full grown man to her on a regular basis, as often as she wants it.   
  
No, as often as she needs it.  
  
I'm too personable, too open, to be like the others. Well, Mouse reminded me a lot of a younger version of myself, couldn't keep his mouth shut, but he could write better programs than I could, and though I know the Matrix like the back of my own two typing hands in front of me, I could never go there.   
  
Freeborns aren't as respected as much as Coppertops because while a Coppertop can be trained to do a Freeborn's job in all of thirty seconds, a Freeborn can never go into the Matrix and has to work a lifetime to learn the things they need to know. No wonder this Zionist pride has sprung up in the last couple decades. It's all we have left. We can't compare to Coppertops in so many ways, I'll never run from an Agent, "eat" at that stupid noodle house, or even shoot Trin's favorite gun, because it only exists as a couple lines of coding.  
  
But I have her, so I don't miss that stuff. I never had it, why miss it?  
  
Guess the same thing goes for what I've got with her. It isn't as much as I should want, I do know that. I should ask for, demand, expect, more, I know that. I deserve more.  
  
But this is all I ask. Because it's her. And because it's me. And that's the way it is. This is the real world, no fantasies here.  
  
* * *  
  
He lived. His brother died, but he lived. I don't know what I would have done had he not, but no point in what-ifs, that's for dreamers, like him, not me.  
  
I know I am only a release for him, but it's enough. It's not what I want, but I can handle being in a one-sided relationship. My sister from the Matrix would kill me for being so weak, but really, I'm being strong. I will not beg, even him, for what I can live without.  
  
If it's really living.  
  
This is so different than what was in the Matrix. I know that technically it didn't really happen, but that doesn't make the emotions I went through any less real.  
  
I have been on the other side of this sort of relationship before, I will not hurt him by asking more than he can give. I can't hurt him like that.  
  
I know that the others are different, they share themselves with each other, but though I've tried, they won't accept me. Especially him, he is the confidant of so many, so opposite of me, the confidant for none, the friend of none. But he needs a release valve. So I will take this crumb that has been offered me, as the available woman onboard, because it is all I will ever get.  
  
I know that, it's simple fact. This is the real world, no fantasies here.  
  
THE END  
  
Author's Note: I swear I didn't mean for it to be screwed up (them in love but not getting it) until I got into the third paragraph, and I never intended to write her side until I unexpectedly failed to cease typing. Heck, this fic is one of the most spontaneous I've ever written, I didn't even get the title until I typed it at the end of Tank's bit. Hope you enjoyed the new and improved version! 


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